When CNN and six other channels suddenly vanished from Dish Network on October 21 due to failed contract negotiations with content provider Turner Broadcasting, I decided to go along with the gag, for one of my masochistic little experiments in customer service.

The trouble with journalists appearing as themselves in entertainment is that the public already has difficulty discerning fact from fiction in the news. When real reporters allow themselves to be part of fiction, it costs them their credibility.

When you get right down to it, it is pretty heartbreaking to think that we have to teach our sons not to rape and that we have to explain to them that women are their equal and are worthy of their respect -- regardless of whether those women are drunk, sober, or something in between.

Crowley, Harlow and Callan need to think about the young victim and the physical, mental, and emotional trauma she has been through. They need to question the place of football in our society. They need to stop blaming the victim.

CNN appears to have bet on the emotions of those it could show on camera -- for obvious reasons, the victim's identity has been protected, and the victim's family was not shown weeping in court. Networks know that people crying make for great TV. It's telling that this tone continued over multiple segments, despite a cadre of tweets and blog posts deriding the network's earlier coverage.

It would be possible to cut the Federal Aviation Administration budget in a far less disruptive way than the sequestration plan outlined by the agency's administrator. Was it about grandstanding and budget hype?

So here they are, the top 10 females who cost Mitt Romney the presidency, each of them representing one of the myriad factors that helped construct the unelectable mosaic that became Bain's Captain of Industry.